Thanks for the reminder to stay optimistic, and for what you're doing. It can be overwhelming to consider the strength of the forces against openness and transparency, but we won't get anywhere without people like you guys having the courage to challenge them.

If your lawsuit is successful, do you believe the NSA will actually comply with the verdict? Is the NSA still under the control of the US government? Also, since the NSA has potentially infected the very hardware of the internet's infrastructure, how can we verify if they are being compliant?

What original documents do you have that can be used as proof of citizenship? If you can prove you are a HK citizen you should most likely contact the Chinese consulate nearest to you. If you're a British citizen you should probably get that passport instead.

If your citizenship is hard to prove, or if your visa status in the US has lapsed, you should probably contact an immigration lawyer before doing anything else.

Was there an expansion of infrastructure, public works, and other sorts of major projects after the fall of the republic? Did the centralization of power make it easier to execute expensive and time-consuming initiatives?

The Economist is saying structural reform is when governments make bureaucracy more efficient, and make it easier for companies to do business, which benefits the people. That commenter is saying that governments should instead focus on removing the influence of special interest groups, who work against the interests of the people.

The two are not mutually exclusive though, and that comment is basically an off topic rant about inequality.

If you like food, go to Jalan Alor. It's a street with lots of food stalls, outdoor restaurants, and fresh fruit and juice. I had a whole crab in curry sauce, one of the best things I've ever eaten. Also it's a good place to try durian since they are fresh and the place is open air.

If you go to Batu caves and want to see monkeys, you might need to bring them bananas, otherwise they might not come close.

If you like The Lodge and Le Creuset, you should get a dutch oven from The Lodge. I got one on Amazon and it works great, and cost so much less. It is made from iron coated in porcelain, easy to clean after slow cooking for many hours.

As for brand name consumables, I probably have every Lee Kum Kee sauce ever made. Every other Asian sauce brand is inferior, except Sriracha.

Geanakoplos' course is about basics such as pricing models for bonds and derivatives, portfolio theory, statistical methods, and macro policy. It's a good intro course for people interested in both finance and macro. There is no technical analysis in the course.

So if 7% of wines are corked to where almost anyone can tell, (5ppt), we can assume a ten times higher incidence of .5 ppt taint, which could be as high as (gulp!) 70%.

You can't make that assumption unless you know the distribution of the taint process. Why assume a 1/10th concentration occur at a 10x higher rate? What if it's closer to a binary function, where the majority of bottles have zero taint?

It felt like watching a Superbowl where the Browns stomp the Bengals 50-7, whereas TI3 was like the 49ers beating the Broncos 21-20. Even if they were the best teams and earned their spot in the finals, it wasn't fun to watch.